This July 24, 2003 photo shows former priest Stephen Kiesle during a hearing in Martinez, Calif. A letter obtained by the Associated Press and bearing the signature of future Pope Benedict XVI shows then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger resisted defrocking Kiesle, who had a record of sexually molesting children, after his case had languished for four years at the Vatican. The 1985 letter was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of Rev. Kiesle. (AP Photo/Bay Area News Group, Susan Tripp Pollard) MANDATORY CREDIT, NO SALES, MAGS OUT

Photo: Susan Tripp Pollard, Associated Press 2003

This July 24, 2003 photo shows former priest Stephen Kiesle during...

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John S. Cummins, former bishop of the diocese of Oakland, Calif., recalls correspondence from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger regarding troubled priest Stephen Kiesle as he looks over copies of a document brought by the Associated Press to his home in Oakland,Calif. on Friday, April 9, 2010. A letter obtained by the AP and bearing the signature of future Pope Benedict XVI shows then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger resisted defrocking Kiesle, who had a record of sexually molesting children, after his case had languished for four years at the Vatican. The 1985 letter was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of Rev. Kiesle. Cummins, 82 and now retired, initially told the AP

The future Pope Benedict XVI did not resist repeated requests to defrock a child-molesting East Bay priest, but was handling the issue "expeditiously ... by the standards at the time," a Berkeley lawyer for the Vatican said Saturday.

The attorney's comments came a day after a letter surfaced that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent to the Oakland Diocese in 1985, saying he needed more time to consider a request from then-Oakland Bishop John Cummins to defrock Stephen Kiesle, who had already pleaded no contest to lewd conduct charges for tying up and molesting two boys at a parish in Union City, where he was a teacher and priest.

The letter was not a sign that the future pontiff did not take child abuse charges seriously, said lawyer Jeffrey Lena.

Defrocking a priest is an entirely separate process from taking him out of public service and, in the case of child abuse, making sure he is kept away from young people, Lena said. It was up to Cummins, not those higher up in the Catholic Church, to keep Kiesle out of trouble before he officially left the priesthood, Lena said.

"During the entire course of the proceeding the priest remained under the control, authority and care of the local bishop who was responsible to make sure he did no harm, as the canon law provides," Lena said. "The abuse case wasn't transferred to the Vatican at all."

Kieslehad pleaded no contest to the lewd conduct charges in 1978. He served three years of probation, and then asked to be removed from the priesthood. Cummins agreed he should leave.

That was in 1981, the same year that Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican department responsible for disciplining priests. Cummins wrote multiple letters, requesting Kiesle's removal, but the priest wasn't defrocked until 1987.

Critics have said the letter from Ratzinger is part of a growing collection of proof that the future pontiff didn't do nearly enough to discipline priests involved in child abuse cases in the United States and Europe.

Lewis Van Blois, an Oakland attorney who represented six child abuse victims of Bay Area priests, said Saturday that the letter wasn't surprising.

"We knew that the church hierarchy, from the bishops up to the cardinals all the way to the Vatican, were part of a pattern of cover-up to protect the priest and the church at the expense of the victims," he said. "Not much was being done to get rid of these abusing priests."

A line in the letter from Ratzinger to Cummins, recommending that Kiesle be provided with "as much paternal care as possible," is particularly troubling, Van Blois said.

"What it means to me and I think to the general public is we've got to protect our own at the expense of past and future sexually abuse children," he said.

But Lena said the reference to "paternal care" was a strong statement from Ratzinger that it was the bishop's duty to make sure that Kiesle didn't harm anyone before he could be laicized, or removed from priesthood.

Laicization is a "rigorous" process with "deep religious significance" that takes time, Lena said. That process is unrelated to how the local church leadership chooses to handle a troubled priest in the interim.

"In the public mind, laicization is thought about as the 'firing' of a person. The Vatican does not 'hire' priests and does not 'fire' priests," he said. "It is not like simply taking off a collar, or firing a person from a job."